Humanitarian aid is one of those things that sound good at first, but at second thought comes off as arrogant and outright dumb. The instinctive response to problems abroad is to help other people get back on track. But is it really that easy? What if we end up doing more harm than good? Even more, what are the true intentions behind humanitarianism, which today has turned into an industry?

Humanitarians are part of the problem, not part of the solution. So goes Conor Foley's argument in his well-written and thought-provoking book The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War. Foley's book is an exceptional critique of humanitarian interventionism, in that it is written by a self-professed humanitarian. Conor has worked for Liberty, Amnesty and the United Nations in every global hotspot of the last decade ranging from the Balkans to Afghanistan via Africa and Asia. His work prompts one to sit down and really think about the issue. He goes far beyond the banal commentary of some left-wing writers who condemn every international intervention as US imperialism, providing us with a well-researched and thoughtful argument.

Throughout the 1990s, the idea of humanitarian intervention rapidly gained in popularity in a world where the balance of power was suddenly no more. The idea of spreading democracy and human rights has always been in line with America's self-created "manifest destiny". It was thus not hard for individuals and organisations to pull at the heartstrings of Washington politicians, as well as those in Whitehall and Berlin, to get democracies to stand up for human rights as defined by a liberal, educated western elite.

There is also the issue of the role humanitarians play in actual conflicts. Once on the ground, humanitarian organisations are often there promoting western values, although they proclaim to be neutral. In realty, very few modern day humanitarian organisations are neutral. Instead, they are multimandate. This means in addition to providing humanitarian assistance (food, shelter, etc) they also work on programmes promoting the rights of women, literacy for children and sex education. Most humanitarian organisations are run and supported by upper-middle class, educated, liberal, white, westerners unable to divorce themselves from their own cultural bias. Of course women in Afghanistan should be treated equally to men – and while we provide Afghans with food we are also going to get women into parliament. I (and Foley, I assume) believe in the rights of women, but one needs to keep in mind the cultural modernity of many of these countries where the west is involved. Western governments are always accused of imperialism, but far too few interrogate what is essentially humanitarian imperialism and Foley calls them out for it.

We can identify a couple of strong arguments against humanitarianism here:

(1) Humanitarianism is often ideologically clouded and can hype a conflict to make it even worse.

(2) Humanitarianism has so far failed to help people on their own merits and instead pushed Western values, Western technology and Western political interests in the third world.

(3) Humanitarianism has become a moral pseudo-argument for imperial interests in foreign nations.

I would add:

(4) It unables countries to learn how to stand on their own (parallelism).

#1: This a self-evident truth for anyone who has studied the Western bias when trying to solve foreign conflicts. Remember how NATO decided to bomb Serbia because of the Kosovo crisis? Instead of recognizing the true history behind Kosovo, NATO, running the puppet errands of American interests, wanted to control Kosovo as an important proxy state for geopolitical purposes, a conflict that's led up to the Cold War situation between Russia and America today.

#2: Every time we try to save people in the third world, we impose our values and standards upon them. We want to solve their problems with our abilities and ideas, which is quite arrogant when you think about it, because it suggests we are Right and they are Wrong. We like to think that ideas like democracy, equality and brotherhood are universal. The truth is that these are basically European ideals, championed during the Enlightenment, and will not be accepted everywhere around the world, as seen here:

The survey, "What Women Want: Listening to the Voices of Muslim Women," is a part of the Gallup World Poll, which plans to survey 95 percent of the earth's population during the century. In Western mythology, Muslim women are projected as victims of vicious Muslim men, a myth that is also peddled by secularised Muslim women to curry favour with their Western masters. This line is particularly popular with Western-backed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have infested Muslim societies in recent years. Their lack of grassroot support has been exposed, for instance, in Afghanistan, where hundreds of NGOs have set up offices ostensibly to help liberate Afghan women from oppression. Since the removal of the Taliban from political power, the plight of Afghan women has worsened; greater numbers are being killed; incidents of rape (unheard of during Taliban rule) have increased, and the abduction and rape of young children has escalated alarmingly. The presence of thousands of Western troops has helped to corrupt and pollute this most traditional society.

In Pakistan, another favourite target of the West's ‘liberating' "theology of sexuality", the NGOs have repeatedly been exposed as fronts for Western propaganda and promiscuous behaviour. Even in their professed area of work, such as helping villagers and other poor people, they have been found wanting. Last October, when the devastating earthquake struck Kashmir and Northern Pakistan, Western-backed NGOs that had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars, ostensibly to help the mountain people, were nowhere to be seen. It was the much-maligned bearded Muslim men who were at the scene long before the constipated government machinery moved. While the government and the Pakistan army made pathetic excuses about their lack of action, ordinary people, most of them poor, reached the affected areas on their own and busied themselves in rescue work.

Perhaps, before white men continue their crusade to rescue poor brown women from "oppressive" brown men, they should listen to the voices of real Muslim women, not those who apply heavy makeup, flirt and speak with an affected British accent. The West has a tendency to hear only what it wants to hear, not the truth that is often at variance with its own preconceived notions. Muslim women will not take the West seriously at any level while Westerners carry on not listening.

#3: Although the reference is tiresome by now, it still serves as an excellent example of how imperialism can be clouded by an interventionist-humanitarian apperance:

Following the US occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the economic and political life of that country changed radically. Iraq is under the complete economic control of the occupying power, the United States.

Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil economy had been dominated by some 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, 2003 Bremer announced that these state firms would be privatized immediately. ‘Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,’ he said, ‘is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.’

It would at first seem that only those seeds which Iraqi farmers chose to buy from international seed companies would fall under the new US-imposed Iraqi law on patents, that farmers were free to choose. The reality was far different. Iraq was being turned into a huge laboratory for development of food products under control of giant GMO seed and chemical giants such as Monsanto, DuPont and Dow.

Humanitarianism isn't just failue for the third world, it's also harmful to the humanitarians/imperialists. Just when China thought it could overthrow Africa and turn it into its slave state, violence is on the rise:

Five kidnapped Chinese oil workers have been killed by their captors in Sudan, the Sudanese foreign ministry says.

Ali al-Sadiq, a spokesman for the ministry, said two other kidnapped workers managed to flee with minor injuries while two remained in captivity.

He said Monday's "execution-style" killing came "without provocation" and that by slaying the hostages, the kidnappers were apparently going ahead with their threats to drive Chinese interests from Sudan.

In this case we're talking about pure imperialism of course, but so could be it when discussing Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo or any other Western interventionist target the past 50 or so years. We need to recognize that we cannot save the entire world, and even if it sounds like a good idea on paper, it'll cost countless human lives, insane amounts of money and resources, and the third world countries their independence. Humanitarianism is failure, period.